Early Polish Government
From Poland of To-Day and Yesterday by Nevin O. Winter, 1913.
From: 1536 C.E. To: 1791 C.E.
Location: Poland
From Poland of To-Day and Yesterday by Nevin O. Winter, 1913.
The Senate of Poland consisted of two archbishops, fifteen bishops, thirty-three palatines and eighty-five castellans, a total of one hundred and thirty-five senators. When the Diet was not in session the Senate could give temporary decisions which had the force of laws until the Diet met. The Archbishop of Gnesen stood at the head of the Senate. He ranked next to the king, and actually filled that place during the interregnums. Hence he was called the inter rex, and received almost royal honours. The king received him standing, and he had the right of remonstrating with the king on all matters of government. The king had ten ministers, each of whom had a seat in the Senate but took no part in the discussions. The Senate took from the king the right of making peace and war.
Petty diets were held in each palatinate six weeks before the general Diet, at which deputies to the latter were chosen. Questions were also brought forward and prepared which were to be presented to the general assembly of the nation. The usual form of address among the nobles on these occasions was “brother,” for, with a few exceptions, there were no outward marks of distinction. Titles and royal decorations were not introduced until the nation's decadence under the Saxon kings. Every third Diet had to meet in Grodno, a concession originally made to the Lithuanians. It was held two days after Michaelmas every other year, and was supposed to last no more than six weeks. Under no circumstances could the time be extended or shortened, and all deliberations had to take place by daylight. The election assembly was held at Warsaw.
Poland maintained no ambassadors at foreign courts. Whenever the throne became vacant the Diet assembled to examine into the administration of the late king and his Senate before a successor was elected. Any law that was not approved could be repealed and new measures passed which became laws by a unanimous vote.
The king gradually became merely a figurehead. Because he was king, he naturally stood higher than anyone else, but he owed his position to election by the privileged classes. This dignity brought him no power except that of a few appointments.
This was at a time when other nations were doing just the opposite, curtailing the nobles and strengthening the throne. Any plan suggested by him could be blocked by a member of the Diet rising in his seat and saying “I protest.” This immediately dissolved the assembly. Hence bribery and intrigue were the only means of influence that the king himself could employ.
As Poland became decadent, it was an easy matter to corrupt one member who would exercise the right of liberum veto. The liberum veto originated in the principle that a free man cannot be governed or taxed contrary to his own declared will. Thus it came about that unanimous consent was required for all resolutions dealing with these matters, and the dissent of a single individual was sufficient for the rejection of any measure. Had any noble acknowledged the power of the majority, he would have thought that he was yielding to tyranny.
The principle of independence was carried so far that the caprice of the individual outweighed the will of the multitude. A single individual could bring to a standstill the entire machinery of state. On the field of election a single dissent could annul ten, twenty or thirty thousand assents. From 1536 to 1572 the Diet was dissolved seven times, almost one-half of its regular sessions. At a still later period not a single law was passed, or any business done, for a whole generation, during the reign of Augustus III, although the Diet met regularly every two years.
The law of might was frequently enforced. Sometimes when persuasion and threats were alike vain, the fatal nie pozwalam (I do not consent) would cause a thousand swords to be unsheathed. The opposition would thus be ended by the death of the opponent or opponents. This method of establishing unanimity sometimes had a salutary effect in the days before the nation's decadence began.
In 1764 some considered it a special sign of the advancement of civilization since only thirteen were killed during the assembly of nobles in that year. In order to save himself from popular fury the noble used to hand in his protest in writing, and then wander about cursed by the nation and the object of its aversion. If there was too much opposition to be overcome by force a rokosz (confederation) would be formed, bound together by solemn oaths to battle for their opinions. The liberum veto was thus suspended by a movement which sometimes had for its only object the carrying out of the liberum veto of some influential noble or group of nobles. In a confederation the votes of a majority ruled and, whatever the result of its acts, the members could not be punished or looked upon as rebels. Thus revolutions were legally organized in Poland. These confederations will be mentioned frequently throughout the pages devoted to history.
The national forces were cut down in the latter days of Poland's history, because the Diet would not pay for their support; but each magnate had his own body of retainers, and a few of these armed bands of the nobles were at times more numerous than the national army. Some of them even took up arms against the king, or joined forces with those of other powers in opposing the state. Each noble was resolved to preserve his rights and privileges as a feudal lord. He was determined to be a law unto himself, and the country suffered accordingly.
Utopia had been realized, for any gentleman could do as he pleased so long as he did not tread on the toes of some other gentleman. The army had been virtually abolished and the diplomats dispensed with, because the Polish lords refused to pay for them. Disorder spread. As lawlessness increased, however, legislative productiveness also increased; but none obeyed, and there was no means of enforcement. Blackmail and official venality became open; the courts were a scandal. If men were angels and not human, such a political utopia as Poland in her last years might have been ideal. But no state can exist without an executive authority having sufficient power to control its people and to punish the violators of its laws. In every country there are bad qualities to be curbed, as well as good ones to be encouraged.
Poland had excellent laws on her statutes, but the word “obedience” had by tacit consent been eliminated. There was an abundance of princes and generals, but no one was willing to play the part of a humble private. The safety of the country rested on the good will of the privileged classes, who numbered probably one-twentieth of the population. The other nineteen-twentieths bore the burdens, but had nothing to say in the government. They were brave and chivalrous, hospitable and fascinating, but lacked restraint and cohesion. They would rather call in foreign forces to accomplish some selfish end than submit to the slightest curb of what was considered a personal privilege. “Poland was at one time," says a writer, “the most cultured and the most illiterate, the richest in patriots and in traitors, in great men and in mean men.”
In its last extremities almost the one hundred thousand or one hundred and fifty thousand landed population, pleading their privileges as noblemen, refused to pay anything for the support of the army, but levied a poll-tax on artisans, shepherds, millers, farmers, and the poorest sections of the community in general. They even received their wine and other luxuries free of duty. The country had to be supported, so that what the nobles escaped in taxes was paid by the poor peasants. It is no wonder that all the descriptions of Poland, handed down to us by early writers, dwell upon the extreme poverty of the common people and the lack of development of the country. “The natives,” says a writer of the seventeenth century, “were poorer, humbler, and more miserable than any people we had yet observed in our travels; wherever we stopped they flocked around us in crowds, and, asking for charity, used the most abject gestures.''
“The only houses of entertainment,” says an earlier writer, “are places built of wood, where travellers are lodged with the horses, cows, and hogs, in a long stable made of boards, ill-joined, and thatched with straw. 'Tis true that there is a chamber at the end of it with a stove, ... but the inn-keeper lodges in that room with his children and the whole family. Those who have occasion to travel in the summer may avoid part of these inconveniences by lying in a barn on fresh straw.”
In the early history of Poland society was organized on a strictly military basis. The generals, who commanded in the fortresses, were called castellans, and that name clung to petty magistrates in later years. As the Polish army, which had formerly been so formidable, dwindled, and the power of the elected monarchs lessened, the discontented factions formed the habit of appealing to other nations for help to restore order. In this they were simply preparing the way for a great national funeral.
It was Saxon soldiers that put Augustus II on the throne; Swedish arms gave the crown to Stanislaus Leszczynski; Russian troops set the last king in his royal place at Warsaw. Bribery, intrigue, violence—all these forces were employed. There was always a disgruntled faction which disputed the acts of the majority. Monarchs are anything but magnanimous as a rule, and they harboured the idea of benefit. At any rate, it did not hurt their consciences so much to interfere when unasked in the affairs of Poland, as if they had never been requested to send their troops on Polish soil. Thus we can see how the Poles brought their troubles upon themselves, even though we cannot see the justice of the partitions. Swedes, Saxons and Russians fought out their battles on the soil of Poland, technically at peace with all these belligerents, and her provisions were ravaged for the support of all these armies. Nobody thought of asking permission or offering compensation afterwards.
It was not until Poland had been robbed of a third of her territories by the first partition that the nobles consented to surrender some of their rights by the famous constitution of the 3rd of May, 1791. The burghers were then admitted to citizenship, and the condition of the peasantry was greatly ameliorated. A standing army was provided for, and the crown was made hereditary. This act, which was the first really national movement in the history of the country, came too late.
At the period of her greatest expansion the kingdom of Poland extended to the Baltic on the north and reached to the Black Sea on the south, a distance of more than seven hundred miles. From east to west its breadth was nearly as great, for it reached from the heart of Prussia almost to the heart of Muscovy. Its area was about two hundred and eighty-two thousand square miles, or as large as Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kentucky. It was far more expansive than modern Germany or France.
Its population numbered probably twenty millions of people. It was really a vast plain, with hardly any natural frontiers excepting the Baltic Sea on the north and the Carpathian Mountains at the southwest. This lack of natural boundary doubtless accelerated its ruin. Its great artery was the Vistula, which rises in the Carpathians and flows by Cracow, Warsaw, and Thorn, and the main branch finally empties itself into the sea near Dantzig. The basin of this stream formed the real centre of this kingdom. Like the soil, the river is now shared by the three partitioning powers. Our difficulty in names will begin here, also, for in Polish this river is known as the Wisla, and in German it is Weichsel.
Much of the soil is very fertile, but there are also vast barren tracts consisting of sand and swamp, especially in the eastern parts of the country. Poland was almost exclusively an agricultural country. Dantzig (Gdansk) was the greatest commercial centre, and it had joined the Hanseatic League. After the loss of the Black Sea it was practically the only port of the country. There was no manufacturing, except of the simplest necessities, and little mining except the wonderful mines of rock salt at Wieliczka. Trade was generally in the hands of Jews, Germans and Armenians.
During the invasions of the barbaric hordes of the East, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Poland played the part of a bulwark. Her plains were devastated by vast armies of these Orientals, and on two occasions they were checked only at the capital city of Cracow itself. Some go so far as to say that Western civilization itself would have succumbed had it not been for the valor of Polish arms. It must be admitted that a great debt is owing to the Poles for their part in the struggles with the East.
Winter, Nevin Otto. Poland of To-Day and Yesterday. L. C. Page and Company, 1913.
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